The Other Woman’s House (21 page)

‘It had to be. To make up for…everything.' It's seven years since Kit and I had that conversation in the office at Monk & Sons. He hasn't mentioned the possibility of moving to Cambridge or London or Brighton again, not even once. London would certainly be out of the running; now that he
works there several days a week, he's started to bring home stories of how hellish it is: litter-strewn, noisy, grey. It's the sort of thing my mum, who has never been to London, says, but it depresses me more when it comes from Kit, who's supposed to be my ally in the struggle for freedom.

The Christmas after we moved into Melrose Cottage, Kit bought me the ‘4/100' King's College Chapel print. ‘I thought we should have a picture to remind us of Cambridge, since we're not going to be living there,' he said. I couldn't see it as anything but a symbol of my defeat; it ruined my Christmas. The laughing woman on the chapel steps seemed to be laughing at me.

‘In January, when I found that address in Kit's SatNav, I started to wonder about…well, about his sudden change of mind,' I tell Sam. ‘He made out it was because he was worried about my stress levels, but what if it wasn't that at all? What if the reason he wanted to move to Cambridge in the first place was because he had a girlfriend there?'
Selina Gane
. ‘And then they split up – they had a huge row, and she dumped him – and that's why he changed his tune. And then, at some point later on, one of them contacted the other and they got back together, but this time, instead of suggesting to me that we move, Kit had a better idea: to set up home with her at 11 Bentley Grove, while keeping me in Little Holling, safely out of the way. He loves Melrose Cottage – he did exactly what he set out to do in 2003: found a house he loved even more than 17 Pardoner Lane. He'd never give it up if he didn't have to. A couple of weeks ago he commissioned a local portrait artist to paint it, as if it were a person or something.'

Isn't that how you feel about it too?

I don't dare to admit that I'm on the verge of starting to
hate my own home, even though it's lovely and has done nothing wrong.

‘Kit wants both, like a lot of men,' I say angrily. ‘Two lives. Me and Melrose Cottage in one compartment, Selina Gane and Cambridge in the other. And he doesn't care what I want. I'd still like to move. He doesn't even ask me any more. He assumes I'm happy with things as they are, but why would I be?' I snap at Sam, who, like Melrose Cottage, has done nothing wrong.

‘You don't know that Kit's involved with Selina Gane,' he says.

‘You don't know that he isn't.'

And now there's nothing else you can say, is there? Nothing more to be said, nothing you can do, no way of knowing. Welcome to my world.

‘Did you tell Simon Waterhouse all this?' Sam asks.

Talking to Simon was easier than talking to Sam, much easier. I felt less like a freak. Simon wasn't repelled by the strangeness of my story. Sam is, though he's doing his best to hide his discomfort. I had the impression, somehow, when I talked to Simon, that strangeness was his element. He nodded at things I said that would have provoked incredulity in most people, and seemed puzzled by the more ordinary details, asking questions that had no obvious bearing on anything. He kept asking me about Kit's parents, when and why he broke off contact with them.

I didn't tell Simon everything. Not wanting to admit to anything that might be illegal, I didn't mention my stalking habit, my Cambridge Fridays. I didn't tell him I sometimes followed Selina Gane to work, walking behind her, or that she'd turned on me once, in the hospital reception area, asked if she'd seen me somewhere before.

‘No,' I'd said quickly, mortified. ‘I don't think so.'

‘Do you live on Bentley Grove?' she'd asked. She must have seen me there, maybe more than once.

I'd lied again, pretended I had friends who lived there.

I didn't tell Simon that, only a fortnight after the hospital incident, I bumped into Selina again – by chance, in town. I'd decided nothing was going to happen at 11 Bentley Grove that day, so had walked into the city to get something to eat. I was about to plump for Brown's on Trumpington Street when I saw her walking ahead of me. I knew it was her; I'd parked my car at the cul-de-sac end of Bentley Grove and watched her leave the house that morning, and she was wearing the same clothes: green denim jacket, black trousers, high-heeled boots. It was her, and she hadn't seen me. I felt unreasonably annoyed that she wasn't at Addenbrooke's, when I'd been certain that was where she was headed this morning, where she would spend her whole day.

I followed her along King's Parade and onto Trinity Street. When she went into a clothes shop, I hung around outside. She was in there for ages – so long that I started to worry that my eyes had misled me. Perhaps I'd lost her and was standing outside the wrong shop while she hurried away somewhere else, leaving me behind.

After I'd waited nearly an hour, my frustration made me do something so stupid, I still have trouble believing I did it. I walked into the shop. I was so sure I wouldn't find her in there, but there she was. She and the woman behind the till stared at me with the same angry, triumphant look in their eyes; I knew without anyone saying anything that they were friends. ‘What's going on?' Selina Gane demanded. ‘Who are you, and why are you following me? Don't even think about denying it, or I'll call the police.'

My legs nearly gave way. I stared wildly at her, not knowing what to say. I noticed that she wasn't wearing a wedding ring, which made me feel better about nothing.

‘Lock the door,' she said to her friend. Then, to me, ‘I'm getting an answer from you – whatever I have to do.'

Before her friend had a chance to move from behind the till, I ran for the door, and was out and tearing down Trinity Street like a hunted animal in fear for its life. I ran for what felt like miles. When I finally dared to stop and turn round, I saw that there was no one there, or at least no one with any interest in me, and burst into tears of relief. I'd got away. She didn't know who I was. It only occurred to me the following day that I might have said, calmly, ‘My name's Connie Bowskill. I'm Kit Bowskill's wife.' How would she have reacted? Blank incomprehension, or shock? Did she know Kit? Did she know that he was married?

I didn't find out her name on that day either. I only found it out this morning, when Sam Kombothekra told me.

‘Connie?'

‘Mm?'

‘Did you tell Simon Waterhouse?'

‘Yes,' I say. ‘I told him everything I've told you.'

‘What did he say?' Sam asks.

‘I asked her if there was any possibility that she programmed the address into her husband's SatNav herself,' Simon told Charlie. They were sitting at the large wooden table on one side of the swimming pool – Simon under an umbrella and Charlie in the full glare of the sun. She knew it was bad for her, but she loved it: the way it burned its glow into her skin and made her feel as if her brain was dissolving, so that she had no choice but to hurl herself into the pool.

On the lunch front, the unthinkable was happening: Simon was peeling prawns and handing them to her, one by one; that was how guilty she'd made him feel. She was no longer hungry, but she wanted him to keep peeling. He didn't seem to mind, which irritated her a little, but then he'd only done eight prawns so far and she reckoned she could eat about fifty, even if she did end up being sick afterwards. She was confident he'd be fuming and swearing before she was ready to let him off the hook.

‘Why would she programme the address in herself, then accuse her husband of doing it?' she asked Simon.

‘Because she genuinely believes he did it. If she's erased the memory of
herself
doing it, and then she finds it there – well, he must have done it, mustn't he? And she wants to know why. Why's he putting this unknown Cambridge address into his SatNav as “home”?'

‘Bollocks,' said Charlie. ‘People's brains don't erase memories. Why that address, anyway? Your post-traumatic memory-wipe hypothesis would make more sense if the address she'd found in the SatNav had been 17 Pardoner Lane.'

‘Unless 11 Bentley Grove has equal significance for her,' said Simon. ‘Which it might. If she's traumatised enough to delete the memory of putting it into the SatNav, who's to say she wouldn't delete
all
her memories connected to the house? So that, when she sees the address, it means nothing to her.'

Charlie groaned. ‘Here's what happened: the husband, Kit, programmed in the address. The simplest solution and all that.'

Simon held up a peeled prawn and stared at it. ‘Occam's Razor? It's a myth,' he said. ‘If you think back over the last few years of our working life…'

‘Connie Bowskill isn't work, so don't pretend she is,' said Charlie. ‘She's your latest fucked-up hobby. And
our
working life doesn't exist. I left CID years ago. I have my own paid job working for the police, in addition to being your unpaid reality-check provider.'

‘All right, then,
my
working life,' Simon said impatiently. ‘Nothing I've ever had to deal with has been straightforward. Nothing's ever what it looks like, nothing's predictable.' He sighed. ‘Maybe the simplest solution's the winner every time when I'm not around, but it's never worked for me.'

‘The husband's the one who was a student at Cambridge,' said Charlie. ‘He was the one who suggested moving there in 2003, and the address was programmed into
his
SatNav, in
his
car. I'd think exactly what Connie Bowskill thought: that he must have another wife and family at 11 Bentley Grove—'

‘He hasn't,' Simon cut her off. ‘I went to Cambridge, called round at the house. The owner's a woman called Selina Gane,
a doctor. Late forties, no kids, lives alone. I asked her if she knew a Kit Bowskill. She said the name meant nothing to her. She wasn't wearing a wedding ring, so…'

‘When was this?' Charlie snatched the prawn from his hand. ‘When did you
call round
at 11 Bentley Grove?'

‘Few weeks ago. I took a couple of days off.'

‘You told me you were buying a new suit and shoes for the wedding.'

‘I did that as well.'

‘In Cambridge?'

He knew he'd been caught out.

‘You told me you'd bought both at Remmick's in Spilling.'

‘Only because I didn't want to tell you I'd been in Cambridge. You'd have asked why. It'd all have come out, and I didn't want to tell you then. I wanted to tell you now.'

‘I'm not hungry any more,' Charlie said, when he tried to hand her another prawn. ‘You saved it up, to tell me on our honeymoon?'

He nodded. ‘I planned the whole thing – writing the address down somewhere for you to find, denying I wrote it…the whole thing.' For about two seconds, he tried to look contrite. When he saw Charlie trying not to laugh, he smiled, and she saw that he was still pleased with himself for staging his reconstruction so successfully. ‘We've never spent two weeks alone together before,' he said. ‘I was worried we'd run out of things to talk about.'

‘Trust me, that'll never happen. So, is she attractive?'

‘Who? Connie Bowskill or Selina Gane?'

‘Both.'

‘I don't know. You always ask me that.'

‘No, I don't,' Charlie protested automatically.

‘You even asked it about the face in the mountain. Look.' He pointed. ‘You can see it from here, surely?'

Charlie wondered if this was another of his circuitous games. Perhaps Connie Bowskill wasn't the only damsel in distress he had on the go at the moment. Maybe there was some other woman whose husband had claimed he'd seen a face in a mountain, one that she couldn't see however hard she tried. Maybe she'd ended up drowing him in a Spanish swimming pool.

‘Selina Gane's what most men would call attractive, I reckon. Shiny blonde hair, decent face, bobbly figure.'

‘
Bobbly?
'

‘You know.' Simon did an outline with his hands.

Charlie narrowed her eyes at him. ‘More commonly known as “hourglass”,' she said. ‘She's in her late forties, did you say?'

‘Around that. She's rich, as well.'

‘How old's Connie Bowskill?'

‘Thirty-four.'

‘Attractive? For God's sake, Simon, there's nothing embarrassing about saying whether someone's attractive or not!'

‘Skinny, dark. You'd say she was very pretty.'

‘Oh, I'd say that, would I? How do you know Selina Gane's rich?'

‘The way she looked,' said Simon. ‘Her clothes, everything. Loaded, I'd say.'

‘So, if Kit Bowskill's involved with Connie and Selina, he's got it sewn up all ways, hasn't he? One dark, one blonde; one skinny, one bobbly; one older, one younger; one rich, one not so rich. Maybe he's like Sellers – as long as she's female, she's his type.'

‘He's not involved with both of them,' said Simon. ‘I spoke to a few of the neighbours while I was at Bentley Grove, asked
them about anyone they'd seen coming and going from number 11…'

‘I assume you asked in your professional capacity, even though your being there had nothing to do with work?' Charlie said snidely, knowing Simon wouldn't have allowed ethical considerations to get in his way. His own take on whether something was right or wrong was all he ever cared about; the general consensus of opinion was irrelevant to him. He and Charlie had that in common; in his shoes, she'd have abused her power in exactly the same way.

‘I checked with the Land Registry. 11 Bentley Grove's listed in Selina Gane's name only – no mention of Kit Bowskill. I also showed the next-door neighbours on both sides a photo of Bowskill that I'd got from Connie. One of them said he didn't look familiar, she'd never seen him before. Told me she'd only ever seen various women and an elderly couple visiting number 11. The other neighbour, a bent-double guy who looked about two hundred and had the longest name I've ever heard – Professor Sir Basil Lambert-Wall – he said the same about the visitors: lots of women, a couple he described as middle-aged, but I reckon they and the other neighbour's elderly couple are one and the same – Selina Gane's parents, probably. Lambert-Wall took one look at the picture of Kit Bowskill and said, “Of course I recognise him. He installed my new burglar alarm.”'